Alnwick

The history of Alnwick is the history of its castle and its lords. After the Norman Conquest the estate was granted to Gilbert Tyson, one of William the Conqueror's standard-bearers, and about 1096 Ivo de Vesci founded a timber castle on the south bank of the Aln. The de Vesci family held it for more than 200 years; Alnwick Abbey was founded for Premonstratensian canons in 1147, and Hulne Priory followed around 1240. In 1309 the castle passed to the Percy family, who made it the home of the most powerful baronial family in the medieval north.

The town lay on the front line of the wars with Scotland. Malcolm III of Scotland was killed at the first Battle of Alnwick in 1093, and William the Lion was captured here in 1174 during the second. The Percys rebuilt and strengthened the castle in the 14th century; after they challenged Henry IV the king took it in 1403, and in the Wars of the Roses it changed hands between Lancastrians and Yorkists in 1463.

The abbey and Hulne Priory were suppressed in 1539, and for two centuries the Percys left the castle to decay, only returning to live there in the mid-18th century; they have stayed ever since, and the castle is now the home of the 12th Duke of Northumberland and his family. Robert Adam designed Brizlee Tower, the 2nd Duke's tenants raised the Tenantry Column in 1816, and the Victorians redecorated the castle's state rooms in an Italianate style. The railway reached the town, and its branch line closed in 1968; the station became Barter Books in 1991.

Alnwick's identity is bound up with the Percys. The Percy Lion, the family's symbol, stands on top of the Tenantry Column, and Harry Hotspur, Sir Henry Percy, gave his name to the Bondgate Tower. The castle has a long life on screen: it stood in for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films and has been used for films and television from Becket and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to The Black Adder and Downton Abbey.

The Alnwick Garden, revived at the turn of the 21st century, brought a second major attraction to the town. Its revival was the subject of public disputes between the Duchess of Northumberland and garden experts, but the Poison Garden, opened in 2005 with more than 100 toxic, intoxicating and narcotic plants, made it a national tourist attraction.

Old customs survive. Each Shrovetide the town plays Scoring the Hales, a form of mob football first recorded in 1762 that begins with the Duke dropping the ball from the castle battlements. Barter Books, with its barter system for second-hand books, has become a local institution, and the Alnwick Playhouse on Bondgate is the town's theatre. The name is pronounced "Annick".

About 8,400 people lived in Alnwick at the 2021 census. It is the traditional county town of Northumberland, 32 miles south of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Scottish border, 34 miles north of Newcastle and 5 miles inland from the North Sea at Alnmouth.

Tourism drives much of the economy: in 2016 the castle and the garden together received over 600,000 visitors a year, and Barter Books alone has over 350,000 visitors a year, 40 per cent of them from outside the area. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is also among the employers in the town.

Life centres on the Market Place and Bondgate, with their shops, pubs and cafés, and on the A1 that runs past the town towards Newcastle and Edinburgh. A heritage railway project is slowly rebuilding the old branch line towards Alnmouth from a new station, Alnwick Lionheart, on the edge of town. The footballer Lucy Bronze played junior football with Alnwick Town, which has a plaque in her honour.

Alnwick's food is that of rural Northumberland and its coast. Craster kippers come from the fishing village of Craster a few miles away, which has long had a herring-curing business: a kipper is a whole herring split from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled and cold-smoked over smouldering wood chips, typically oak, and in Britain it is most often eaten for breakfast.

Pan haggerty, the Northumberland version of the northern casserole panackelty, is potatoes, onions and cheese baked in a dish. Singin' hinnies, rich griddle cakes of flour, lard or butter, currants and milk, are made especially in Northumberland and the North East's coal-mining areas and take their name from the sizzle they make on the griddle; "hinny" is a local term of endearment. The stottie, a round, flat bread split and filled with ham, bacon or egg and often pease pudding, is found across the North East.

Eating out is informal: pubs and cafés around the Market Place and Bondgate, and the Station Buffet at Barter Books, which serves hot food in the old station's tiled waiting rooms.